In the waiting room, human decency reigns
I usually use some of my meagre money chest kept for medical and other emergencies to see a private eye specialist because he’s an authority on retinitis pigmentosa, which is the cause of my legal blindness. But recently I faced a dilemma: my cataracts need to come off, but this disorder c...CONTINUE READING
Government’s far right sympathies not OK
“A radically evil Third Reich operative living inside the deceptively normal shell of a bland bureaucrat.” This was how Thomas White, writing for aeon.co in April, summarised a historian’s view of Adolf Eichmann, responsible for sending millions to Hitler’s concentration camps. I thought o...CONTINUE READING
Inspiring cave rescue cannot obscure society’s darkness
“We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science, or what”. You will recognise this Facebook post by Thai Navy SEALS. It signalled the completion of a daring operation to rescue the 12 Wild Boar soccer players and their coach from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system in the Mae Sai district...CONTINUE READING
Trump lies, but his lies are the small ones
The Oxford Dictionary declared “post-truth” the word of the year in 2016, with the explanation: “it describes not just particular assertions, but a general characteristic of our age”. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was widely thought to embody this new age. And now, it seems his pres...CONTINUE READING
Pre-colonial society shows humans can live collectively
“If the test of sophistication were whether or not all were fed regardless of rank or whether all contributed to the spiritual and cultural health of the civilisation, Aboriginal Australia might have a much higher rank than some of the nations considered the hallmark of human evolution.” S...CONTINUE READING
There’s nothing good about Turnbull’s sex ban
What to do when desperately trying to keep your government from sinking in a mire of salacious scandal brought on by Barnaby Joyce’s sordid and hypocritical personal life? Malcolm Turnbull’s solution is a new “code of conduct” for government ministers, which bans them, married or single, f...CONTINUE READING
Was there a parliamentary alternative in Russia 1917?
“He who controls the past controls the future.” So says Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Makes me think of the gaggle of reputable historians who roll out fictional accounts of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Bolshevism? Workers’ power? Don’t even think of it; listen...CONTINUE READING
Russia 1917: when the people rose
A century ago, Russian workers blazed a new path in human history. Their revolution of 1917 inspired millions around the globe and struck terror into the hearts of the rich.CONTINUE READING
Women, class and the Bolsheviks
Most accounts of the Russian Revolution of 1917 rightly emphasise the role of women workers in Petrograd on International Women’s Day (IWD), when their strikes sparked the mass movement that overthrew the tsar. But then they disappear regarding the rest of the year – except for the women’s...CONTINUE READING